1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a slide show system for performing a remote slide show by using the screen information obtained by a browser in one or more browser systems referring to an information network such as a WWW (World Wide Web) which is currently a main source of information on the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet is realized by connecting a plurality of computers via a communication network. A world-wide information network which is realized by the Internet is named a WWW system. Recently, as an amount of information transmission increases over the WWW system, various kinds of multi-media information have been provided on the Internet.
A page of the WWW (a web page) is a unit of the multi-media information to be provided on the WWW, and is composed of an HTML (HyperText Markup Language) document and related data which are stored in an arbitrary WWW server. The WWW server transmits this web page to a browser provided on a WWW client according to an HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol). The WWW browser displays the thus-received web page on a screen of the WWW client.
The web page generally can provide text information composed of character data, image information composed of graphic data, audio information, animation information or the like to a user by using the HTML. Therefore, here, the display of a web page includes not only the outputting of text information or image information but also the outputting audio information, animation information or the like, which is included in the web page.
In order that a user accesses such information, it is necessary to input address information which uniquely represents a server and an HTML document storing that information. This address information is composed of several character strings and is named a URL (Uniform Resource Locator).
However, it is difficult for a user to remember a complicated URL composed of several tens of characters for a long time. Further, in a case where a predetermined page is required to be referred to many times, it is neither convenient nor effective to type this URL every time. Therefore, in order to easily display a web page, a WWW browser is generally provided with a function named a bookmark.
The bookmark function is to register a site which a user is fond of and a page which is frequently accessed, in a browser. The user first registers the URL of a page to be displayed as a bookmark. Then, at the time of accessing, the user displays a list of pages which are registered as bookmarks, and selects a desired page by clicking a mouse. Thus, the user can display his or her desired page without inputting a complicated URL.
FIG. 1 shows an example of a representative bookmark display screen. As shown in FIG. 1, a set of bookmarks 2 can be stored in a folder 1, and the bookmarks 2 are hierarchically managed.
In a folder “Lookup”, bookmarks 2 such as “People” and “Yellow Pages” are registered. These bookmarks 2 are list-displayed by clicking the folder “Lookup”. The user selects a desired page by double-clicking a line (an object) indicating the bookmark 2 such as “People” or the like so that he or she can display the desired page on a screen.
However, there arise the following problems about the above-mentioned conventional WWW browser:
Recently, as the functions of a portable personal computer become enhanced and its cost decreases, a lot of presentations and conferences have taken place using such a personal computer. When such presentations or conferences take place, information of a web page is frequently displayed by connecting the personal computer to the Internet.
However, there are a lot of cases where time is greatly restricted when a presentation or a conference is taking place. Therefore, it is neither convenient nor effective to type the above-mentioned URL every time. Therefore, it is thought that the bookmark function is used as a method of quickly displaying a web page. However, this case also requires a lot of effort to display a list of bookmarks and to click the bookmark of a desired page each time, so that it takes a predetermined operation time period to display a page in a browser.
There is a case where a speaker explains pages changing some pages every few minutes according to the contents of a presentation. In this case, it is necessary to type a URL or select a bookmark whenever changing pages, so that a sufficient explanation cannot be given since the speaker spends a lot of time for operation of the browser system.
Furthermore, on educational scenes, lessons or lectures have been given by referring to the information on web pages with many personal computers connected to the Internet. Repeated at this time are the procedures such that a teacher or professor writes a URL on a blackboard or in a textbook or orally specifies the URL, and each student inputs the URL to the WWW browser of his or her own personal computer so that each student refers to the page specified by the teacher or professor.
However, when each student inputs a URL to his or her own WWW browser, an input may be erroneously made or a considerable amount of time may be taken in some cases, which leads to an obstacle to the smooth progress of a lesson or lecture.
Accordingly, use of a bookmark capability is considered to reduce a student's load of directly inputting a URL, and to ensure the specification of a URL with ease. If it is necessary to use many personal computers at the same time, required bookmark data are preset for each personal computer, and the data after being used is deleted in order to restore the personal computer to its original state. In this case, a considerable amount of time is required to prepare and postprocess the bookmark data, which causes an inconvenience.